Odes

Horace

Horace. The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace. Conington, John, translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1882.

In my Sabine homestead blest,

Why should I further tax a generous friend?

Suns are hurrying suns a-west,

And newborn moons make speed to meet their end.

You have hands to square and hew

Vast marble-blocks, hard on your day of doom,

Ever building mansions new,

Nor thinking of the mansion of the tomb.

Now you press on ocean's bound,

Where waves on Baiae beat, as earth were scant;

Now absorb your neighbour's ground,

And tear his landmarks up, your own to plant.

Hedges set round clients' farms

Your avarice tramples; see, the outcasts fly,

Wife and husband, in their arms

Their fathers' gods, their squalid family.

Yet no hall that wealth e'er plann'd

Waits you more surely than the wider room

Traced by Death's yet greedier hand.

Why strain so far? you cannot leap the tomb.